On Monday, June 11, the internationally acclaimed cellist Amit Peled performed in Orleans for the season premiere of the Meeting House Chamber Music Festival. Enjoy this review by Keith Powers in The Cape Cod Times: Peled gives personal touch to fest opener
House Chamber Music Festival. Peled put his bow to the superb 1733 Gofrillercello once treasured and played by the great Pablo Casals himself, and took music-lovers on the personal musical journey Peled calls When Bach Met Bloch. The event launched this year’s 6-concert series and the 45thseason for Cape Cod’s longest-running music festival, founded by pianist Donald Enos in 1974. In the span of seven weeks ending July 23, Enos will bring Cape Cod music-lovers an exciting mix of traditional and contemporary repertoire performed by top-flight regional and international talent
With his larger-than-life persona and musicianship, 6-foot-tall Amit Peled has enchanted the festival’s many fans each summer for more than a dozen years, just as he has thrilled audiences around the globe. Enos sought to team with Peled not only because of the cellist’s virtuosity, but because he brings to his performances the authenticity, raw emotion, and diverse cultural inspirations that Enos himself values, and that have become the festival’s trademark. This concert surprised and delighted listeners as the Grammy-nominated Peled journeyed through Bach’s solo pieces for cello—regarded to be among the most profound works in the entire classical repertoire—and those of the twentieth-century Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch, whose works integrate elements of traditional Jewish music and post-Romantic form.
The festival’s imaginative programming continues on June 25 in the hands of a dazzling young duo from New York, bassoonist Nanci Belmont and oboist Stuart Breczinski. With Enos at the piano, they will present a diverse and energetic program with works by Vivaldi, Saint-Saëns, Pierre Max Dubois, Daniel Black, George Rochberg, André Previn, and others.
Acclaimed as “irresistible” by the Boston Globe, violinist Irina Muresanu has left earlier festival audiences spellbound with her passionate, elegant, and moving performances. She returns on July 2, accompanied this year by Gabriela Diaz, who has been heralded by critics as “a young violin master” and “one of Boston’s most valuable players.”
As the season unfolds, the line-up of outstanding instrumentalists will also include cellists Bo Ericsson and Megan Koch; violinists Katie Lansdale, Heather Goodchild Wade, and Audrey Wright, violist Laura Manko Sahin, and hornist Clark Matthews. The series will include a remarkably diverse set of works from composers ranging from Pergolesi, Mozart, Brahms, and StravinskytoLars-Erik Larsson, Astor Piazzolla, Zoltán Kodály, Malcolm Arnold, and Frank Bridge.
Festival founder/artistic director/pianist Donald Enos welcomes all to experience the Meeting House Festival this summer. In his words, the festival offers “the delight of hearing exquisite instrumental nuance in ensemble, and the full range of exposed emotion made possible through chamber music.”
The Meeting House Chamber Festival is grateful for the support of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Cape Cod 5 Foundation, and the Mary-Louise and Ruth N. Eddy Foundation.
Performances are typically held at 7:30 pm on Monday evenings at Church of the Holy Spirit in Orleans. The Monday, July 16, program will also be presented at 7 pm on Sunday, July 15, at 1717 Meetinghouse in West Barnstable. Tickets can be purchased at the door or in advance by calling 508.896.3344. Single tickets: $25 (under 18 free). 6-Concert Series: $95.
Here is the complete season listing: Festival Concerts
Visit the Festival's website for more: Meeting House Chamber Music Festival